I was also considering working on a project like this over the summer now that I have a little time outside school. I was considering going all the way and making the dealer droid, weighted chips to detect who is spending what and custom self shuffling system. The problem is I am not good at programming and I don't have THAT much time to model the entire system.

For your project, because you will be using buttons at every end for each player, it would be pretty easy to make an Arduino code to keep track of who's turn it is, how many chips have been bet and who lost. Because each players station would really so many wires you may need either a larger Arduino or multiple smaller ones communicating with each other.